Emmerich Knoll Federspiel Gruner Veltliner Kreutles 2020
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Enthusiast
Wine -
Suckling
James
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Delicate meadow herbs on the nose, hints of fresh apricot and yellow apple and floral honey. Juicy, elegant and balanced palate with a touch of mango.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This is rich, yet elegant, with loads of white raspberry, sweet pea, citrus oil and dried sage. It shows a bit of viscosity, with powerful spice notes that carry through to the long finish, along with plenty of macadamia nut and herbs. It is brilliantly harmonious already, but this will reveal much more with the years to come.
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James Suckling
This delightful Wachau gruner veltliner has a whole herb garden of aromas, plus fresh green peas and beans, green apples and tart pears. And then comes elegance that’s rare amongst the wines of this grape and vintage. The long, crisp and herbal finish pulls you back for more.
Other Vintages
2019-
Suckling
James
Fun to say and delightfully easy to drink, Grüner Veltliner calls Austria its homeland. While some easily quaffable Grüners come in a one-liter—a convenient size—many high caliber single vineyard bottlings can benefit from cellar aging. Somm Secret—About 75% of the world’s Grüner Veltliner comes from Austria but the variety is gaining ground in other countries, namely Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the United States.
As Austria’s most prestigious wine growing region, the landscape of the Wachau is—not surprisingly—one of its most dramatic. Millions of years ago, the Danube River chiseled its way through the earth, creating steep terraces of decomposed volcanic and metamorphic rock. Harsh Ice Age winds brought deposits of ancient glacial dust and loess to the terrace’s eastern faces. Today these steep surfaces of nutrient-poor and fast draining soil are home to some of Austria’s very best sites for both Grüner Veltliner and Riesling.
Wachau is small, comprising a mere three percent of Austria’s vine surface and, considering relatively low yields, represents a miniscule proportion of total wine production. Diurnal temperature shifts in Wachau facilitate great balance of sugar and phenolic ripeness in its grapes. At night cold air from the Alps and forests in the northwest displace warm afternoon air, which gets sucked upstream along the Danube.
Its sites are actually so varied and distinct that more emphasis is going into vineyard-designated offerings even despite grape variety. Grüner Veltliner and Riesling are most prominent, but the region produces Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc (Weissburgunder), Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and Zweigelt among other local variants.